Repair Flash Drive Windows 10
Ceola Roefaro
A portable storage device is a USB flash drive, pen drive, or external hard drive. This device allows people to carry their data anywhere they go and use it with various devices. Sometimes, this frequent use of the USB device can cause issues, like leading the USB drive to corrupt.
When you encounter issues like having a USB drive showing up or a USB drive becomes RAW and not accessible, you'd better try to recover data from the damaged USB flash drive. When you don't have any backups and pen drive data not showing, you should try EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. You can download this function USB data recovery software now.
Sometimes, it is possible that you have assigned the same drive letter as other disks to the USB drive. That may cause your USB drive not to show up or be recognized by the computer. Let's see how to change the drive letter to fix the USB stick in the Disk Management:
If your flash drive is not physically broken, your computer should recognize it and assign it a drive letter. In this case, follow the methods below to check and fix the logical errors on your USB. These methods shouldn't cause any data loss.
If the USB drive is detected but not accessible on your computer, you can try to fix the logical error using the native Windows tool, Command Prompt, or a third-party fixing tool. Then, you will be able to access your USB.
This command makes the Windows operating system scan and repair file system errors on the flash drive. If the repair process works properly, it will show Windows has made corrections to the file system in the command window. This suggests that the corrupted USB pen drive has been successfully fixed and can be accessed again.
EaseUS CleanGenius is a user-friendly computer fixing tool that is both safe and lightweight. It's a perfect alternative to CHKDSK command. Use this one-click tool to fix the damaged file system easily.
If your USB drive is physically damaged and cannot be detected or recognized, reinstalling the USB drivers is worth trying. Or, you can try to connect your device to different USB ports to diagnose the problem.
Your computer may not recognize the file system of USB drives, or the file system is RAW, and ask you to format it. Basically, you can easily fix this RAW drive problem by formatting the USB, but you should also know that the data on the USB drive will be erased after formatting.
Step 2. Use the magnifying glass to inspect the circuit board (PCB) and solder pads. If the PCB (the green circuit board) is damaged or the solder pads are lifted, you will probably need the help of a professional.
Solder pads are the 4 bits of solder that connect the USB connector's prongs to the circuit board's copper lines. If the connector has broken away without causing damage to the PCB or solder pads, continue to the next step.
Step 6. Solder each of the four wires to the four solder pads. Take your time while doing this since failing to secure the connection adequately will most likely render your flash drive inoperable.
Step 8. Then, you can open your USB drive. If your flash drive is recognizable by the computer, open it and move your files to a safe place as soon as possible. If the files are missing, you can move to Step 2.
If you think it is impossible to repair the USB drive or other storage devices by yourself, you can also turn to reliable and powerful data recovery services that easily help you repair corrupted SanDisk, Kingston, Sony, Seagate, or Western Digital USB flash drives. Our professional teams will stay online all day and help you repair the device even if the USB is dead.
First of all, Rufus didn't damage your USB drive. It only removed the letter Windows assigned it, which it needs to do to be able to repartition and format it, and since you cancelled that operation, the drive letter was not assigned back. This is why you couldn't see it in Explorer, but you could still see it in Device Manager/Disk Manager.
The simple option, to make your drive listed again so that you could format it and get a letter reassigned, was to follow this entry from the Rufus FAQ. A couple of clicks in Rufus was all that was needed.
Also, the latest versions of Rufus has improved the default enumeration process and will automatically list raw or unpartitioned drives, so you should no longer have to do anything even if you cancel in the middle of a bad blocks check or a format operation.
But by Rufus it can be seen as "NO_LABEL (Disk 2) [16GB]".I just selected "boot section" dropdown menu to "not bootable", clicked "start" in Rufus. And voila my USB stick is now again recognized in windows :)
Another possibility is the device used to connect the USB drive to the PC doesn't fully support the drive - it can use it, but not format it properly. You may not be aware of this without checking the device's specs. In this case the USB drive can be reformatted using a device that does fully support it, and then Rufus will work through that device.
Specific example: I tried to use a 256Gb SD card in a GoPro Connect2 camera, which only fully supports 64Gb cards. Rufus (v3.14 in Windows 10) couldn't complete writing an image to it, and when I tried again with option "Check device for bad blocks" it seemed to get stuck in a loop (I left it on 64%, next morning it was back on 23%); when I cancelled the check the card was left unusable, similar to what OP saw - and was invisible even in Disk Manager on Windows 10. I used a newer camera to reformat it and then tried Rufus again and it worked fine.
These handy portable storage devices are extremely popular but they are often very fragile and delicate. They cost very little to manufacture and can be found online for only a few dollars; however, with the cheaper models the quality control is not particularly great, and they can break easily. Because they are cheap, USB flash drive repair is not common. Not only are they easy to damage, but file system errors are common and data corruption is a frequent problem we encounter. Improper removal of the USB drive from the computer can be the start of a corrupted USB drive. Issues that require USB flash drive repair can be logical or physical.
The cost to repair a corrupted USB flash drive is usually not very high, but as always, the costs will depend on the complexity of the issue. There are two common types of corruption issues found with USB drives: a USB drive with logical corruption, or a USB drive with corruption caused by physical damage.
Logical corruption is a problem that can sometimes be resolved with a home fix, and we will go into this in some detail later on and explore what USB flash drive repair tools are worth checking out. But before you start Googling for data recovery software, we recommend you consider how important the data is to you, as attempting a home fix or using USB repair tools rather than using a professional repair service is likely to result in permanently lost data. If the USB drive has nothing important on it, then a home flash drive repair is one way you might try to recover data.
Knowledge of how to fix and repair a corrupted USB drive can save you a lot of work in redoing a project all over again. A USB pen drive works under the same memory principle as a computer hard drive. Before you try USB flash drive repair, you need to know what is causing the problem. This can mitigate future storage-related issues.
If your USB drive has physical damage, you need to get it sent to Gillware data recovery company repair service. Gillware is a data recovery company based in Madison, Wisconsin. Our data recovery experts have tens of thousands of hours of experience between them. We will rebuild and repair the USB flash drive in one of our cleanrooms.
If you are lucky enough to be suffering from a logically corrupted flash drive and are not worried about potentially rendering the data loss permanent, then grab a coffee and have a go at the following logical USB hard drive/flash drive repair steps. Below are some ways you might try to fix a corrupted USB drive logically on Windows 10.
If your USB port is not working you could try blowing canned air into the port to see if that solves the problem. If not, the port might have to be replaced (which means a trip to your local PC repair shop).
If your USB stick is bent, you can try to carefully bend it back into shape. Use caution with this method. If you apply too much force, you could snap the circuit board inside, rendering your data unrecoverable.
Step 5. Allow Disk Drill to run and finish the scan of the USB device. If you pause or stop the scan before completion, you reduce the chances of a complete data recovery. Depending on how large your drive is, how much data is/was on it, and the speed of your computer, this scan could take some time.
Jack Wallen is a writer with more than twenty years of experience. He has a lot of experience and knowledge and his articles on various topics disposes his readers. He is passionate about his work and continues to produce...
In these scenarios, cleaning the drive completely and creating a new partition with the correct settings are likely to fix the problem. On Windows 10, you can quickly fix this problem with your USB flash drive, SD card, or another removable drive using a few PowerShell commands.
I hope you found this site helpful. Before you move on, I wanted to ask if you would consider supporting my work. As an independent site, producing content takes a lot of work and dedication, and because of those using adblockers and AI, advertising revenue is falling fast. Unlike many other sites, there is no paywall blocking readers here, so you can see why your help is needed. With your support, I can continue the work I love doing. Thank you.
ff7609af8f